Rex Smith: What a press pass requires

Trying to catch up on the news about the news business the other day, I stumbled across an ironic juxtaposition: Chicago journalists, it seems, no longer have to be “of good moral character” to get a press pass, but to get one at the University of California-Berkeley, students now have to sign an honor pledge.

It’s not clear if the embrace of honor in the West and its evasion in the Midwest reveal a geographic difference or just more evidence of the gap between the way things ought to be (what we’re taught in school) and the way they are (what the real world teaches). With all due respect to the good people of Chicago, however, morality isn’t the first attribute we had associated with their city, anyway.

But this set me to wondering about how we should expect journalists to behave, a line of thought that seemed even more appropriate after the dust-up last week between the Republican candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, and the state editor of the New York Post, Frederic U. Dicker, who also is a daily presence on local radio and TV.

Maybe you missed the Paladino-Dicker bout, which you can still check out at http:

/timesunion.com/capitol. It involved fingers poked at chests, raised voices and a confrontation that came so close to blows that Paladino’s campaign manager had to get between the candidate and the reporter.

“Who the hell are you?” Dicker at that point said to the campaign manager.

“I’ll take you out, buddy,” Paladino warned Dicker.

“How’re you going to do that?” Dicker retorted.

“Watch!” Paladino said.

Having observed New York politics for 30 years, I can assure you that the angry man who now leads the state’s GOP isn’t the first politician to wish to take a swing at Dicker, nor even the first to come close to doing it. Shoot, even some journalists have harbored Walter Mitty notions of giving Dicker a zetz to the kup.

In that regard, I should note that Dicker and the tabloid that employs him have taken plenty of shots at me and this newspaper over the years, and that I haven’t been shy about pointing out the routinely distorted coverage that arises from the Post’s state capitol bureau, which sometimes makes Dicker as much the butt of jokes among journalists as he is the object of fear among politicians.

All that said, it’s clear that Dicker’s tenacity is something every journalist ought to emulate. It’s also undeniable that his influence in state politics and government has been unparalleled over the quarter century that he has been on the beat.

And here’s a key point: Dicker set out to ask Paladino a question that was entirely appropriate and that the candidate clearly couldn’t answer — which is partly why Paladino, backed into a corner, fought back so ferociously.

Paladino had implied that his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, had been unfaithful to the woman he was married to from 1990 to 2003. Dicker demanded Paladino’s evidence.

Journalists ought to push politicians to back up their claims. That’s our job. In a better world, this pursuit of truth would involve more policy and less scandal, but if Paladino wants to focus his campaign on that sort of thing, reporters should hold him to a higher standard than innuendo. Bravo to Dicker for that.

Where Paladino may win some points, however, is in a fair assesssment of Dicker’s deportment. Humility is an essential attribute of good journalists, in the sense that the story must be at center stage, not the person who is its conveyor. Dicker’s badgering of Paladino turned their conversation into spectacle.

But in either the real world of Chicago or the ideal environment of Berkeley, that wouldn’t be enough to force Dicker to yield his press pass. It was toward the end of the Paladino-Dicker brouhaha that the candidate got to his real point, when he accused the reporter of being a “stalking horse” and then a “bird dog” for his opponent.

Wearing the multiple hats of reporter, columnist, editor and broadcast pundit, Dicker often mixes opinion with reporting, and his admiration for Cuomo has long been obvious. Paladino’s animal metaphors aside — and notwithstanding the fact that his hot-headed response raised questions about how he would handle the pressures of the governorship — the candidate hit upon something that the faculty in California might appreciate. There, the aspiring journalists must promise “independence from political and commercial influence” if they hope to get one of those coveted student press passes. Doesn’t that sound reasonable?

In fact, you have a right to expect that much from any of us who purport to give you a fair picture of what lies beyond your own view, whatever credential we may be carrying.

One Response

Rex, I could not keep a straight face when I was reading this. The TU is so solidly in the Democratic court there is not even a pretense of “fair and balanced”. I am really going to go nuts when you endorse Breslin and Gordon after appointing them to the Hall of Shame earlier this year! Dicker is a wacko and Cuomo is a crook like his old man. That leaves Paladino in the field. Perhaps not a great choice but perhaps the lesser of two evils. That is about as much as we can expect these days!